Chapter 21 Peeping Over the Wall (1) Yokohama during the rainy season, the air...
During the rainy season in Yokohama, the air is so humid you could wring water out of it. In the evening, a light rain began to fall, enveloping the densely packed residential buildings around.
Yuta Kobayashi dragged his weary steps and swiped open the apartment door. The old automatic door creaked, but its sound was drowned out by the rain outside. The hallway was filled with a faint smell of mildew mixed with the smell of disinfectant, and the lights above seemed to have not been repaired for a long time, flickering and casting swaying shadows on the damp wallpaper.
Room 307.
Yuta Kobayashi has been living in this small room of less than twenty tatami mats for two months.
I chose this place because the rent was incredibly cheap, and the real estate agent assured me that although it was a bit old, it had a great view and a quiet neighborhood.
Whether the view was open or not, Yuko Kobayashi hadn't quite experienced it yet, but the neighborhood was definitely quiet—almost excessively quiet. (Underlined)
It's fair to say that it's gone too far!
Yuko Kobayashi sneered, realizing that she had believed the agent's words back then.
The apartment building, built during the Showa era, had extremely poor sound insulation. He could hear the elderly neighbor coughing late at night, the couple upstairs arguing in hushed tones, and even variety shows on the TV downstairs.
The sounds of daily life from the neighbors in this building permeate every aspect of Yuko Kobayashi's daily life.
Over time, he gradually came to tolerate and accept these annoying sounds.
But lately, he keeps feeling like he can hear something else.
Some subtle sounds that are difficult to describe precisely.
It sounded like someone was gently scraping the inside of the wall with their fingernails, or like something was slowly being dragged between pipes. Whenever Yuko Kobayashi held her breath and tried to catch it, the sound would disappear, leaving only the sound of her own heartbeat growing louder and louder.
He unlocked the door with his key, and a wave of air, even colder and damper than the corridor, immediately hit him, carrying an indescribable smell—similar to the smell of old newspapers piled up in the basement for years.
He instinctively hugged his arms and unconsciously rubbed the goosebumps that had risen on his skin.
Even though it was already summer, this room always had a chill that lingered like a cellar.
"I'm back," he said softly, as was his habit, as he spoke to the empty room.
Even if no one responds, he persists in this habit day after day, which he considers a ritual he creates for himself in his boring life.
Yuko Kobayashi took off her wet leather shoes and put down her umbrella. She changed into indoor slippers and walked heavily into the main house, which served as the living room, kitchen, and bedroom.
The only window was closed, but not completely shut, and through the glass, one could sometimes see glimpses of other people's lives.
Seeing this, Yuko Kobayashi quickly walked over and roughly pulled the beige polyester window shut, as if to shut something out.
Tonight's dinner was a bento box I bought from a convenience store. After heating it in the microwave, it emitted a greasy and bland smell.
He sat at the low table, with his back to the window.
This is a habit he inexplicably developed starting last week.
Because as long as you have your back to the window of the building that faces the window of the building next door, the feeling of being stared at becomes exceptionally strong.
Several times, he turned around abruptly, even jumping up nervously and rushing to the bedside to open the window to check, but apart from a few pieces of clothing fluttering in the wind and rain on the opposite balcony, there was nothing unusual outside.
However, the feeling of being watched closely by something never truly disappeared; it seemed to follow me like a shadow, becoming even clearer on this rainy day.
After finishing his dinner, he threw the lunchbox into the sorted trash bag, took a deep breath, forced himself to sit at the low table, and opened his laptop and thick stacks of documents.
The professor was pressing him hard; a literary paper about the Edo period was weighing heavily on him, making him extremely anxious.
The sound of rain tapping against the glass window, the window frame occasionally groaning eerily in the wind outside, the lamplight casting a warm yellow halo around the documents, but unable to dispel the surrounding chill and the pervasive sense of unease.
He tried to focus his attention on the dense text as he attempted to understand the obscure textual analysis.
"Thump."
A very faint yet exceptionally clear sound came from somewhere on the wall behind him.
The sound was strange; it didn't sound like the crackling of wood expanding and contracting with heat, nor did it sound like a mouse running around.
It was more like something, with a hesitant, tentative intention, gently scraping the inside of the wall with its hard, small tip.
Yuta Kobayashi's fingers froze as he typed, and his heart skipped a beat from the sudden movement.
He held his breath, all his senses focused on hearing in an instant, and he listened carefully.
A deathly silence.
The only sounds were the incessant sound of rain outside the window and the throbbing of my own blood rushing to my eardrums.
Is it just my imagination?
Could it be some noise from upstairs or next door, transmitted through the complex wall structure?
Old houses always have a lot of strange noises. Kobayashi Yuko tried to convince herself with reason, took a few deep breaths, put her fingers back on the keyboard, and looked back at the computer screen.
But the chill behind me suddenly intensified.
It was no longer a faint wisp of air, but had become a substantial, viscous, and cold sensation, as if it were clinging to Kobayashi Yuko's spine, slowly, like a snake, climbing upwards inch by inch.
He could even feel the hairs on his body standing on end.
Yuko Kobayashi couldn't concentrate; every pore on her body was screaming warnings.
He turned around abruptly once again!
The room was empty, everything was as usual.
Under the pale light, books and papers were piled up haphazardly in the corner, and on the wall were a few cheap ukiyo-e reproductions he had found at a second-hand store, as well as a slightly crooked copy of Katsushika Hokusai's "The Great Wave off Kanagawa".
There was nothing else. The strange noise and the cold touch seemed to be just a hallucination caused by his excessive fatigue.
Yuta Kobayashi let out a long sigh, raised his hand to rub his throbbing temples, and muttered to himself, "Idiot... I'm so paranoid."
It must be neurasthenia caused by staying up late to finish his manuscript recently and lack of sleep. He probably needs a good rest, and it would be best if he could take a nap to relax.
He stood up, intending to stretch his stiff limbs and, incidentally, straighten the crooked painting of "The Great Wave off Kanagawa".
He walked to the wall, his hand slowly approaching, and just as his fingertips were about to touch the edge of the simple wooden frame, his movements froze, his arm suspended in mid-air.
Yuta Kobayashi's gaze was drawn to an extremely thin and deep gap between the picture frame and the wall.
The gap, previously hidden by the picture frame, wasn't very noticeable. But now it seemed deeper than imagined, filled with an endless expanse of darkness.
It didn't look like an ordinary wooden board joint or a crack from years of neglect. Its edges were unusually smooth, even faintly reflecting a little light, as if it had been rubbed by something frequently.
Deep within that crevice, Yuta Kobayashi felt an unprecedented chill rise from the soles of his feet, rushing up his spine to the top of his head in an instant, as if all the blood in his body had been frozen at that moment.
He seemed to... really see something moving.
A mixture of extreme fear and a morbid curiosity gripped his heart like vines, constantly driving him forward.
He swallowed something that wasn't even there, and then slowly...
Slowly.
He bent down very slowly.
He held his breath and slowly brought his right eye closer to the dark, endless slit.
Her vision was filled with blurry darkness, and a smell mixed with years of dust and some indescribable stench of decay wafted out from the depths of the crevice and entered Kobayashi Yuko's nostrils.
One second, two seconds... it felt as if time was being stretched out.
His eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness inside, and blurry outlines began to appear at the edges of his vision.
Then--
One eye.
An eye, covered with dense, spiderweb-like scarlet blood vessels, with a cloudy pupil that showed almost no human emotion, was pressed tightly against the other side of the slit, staring back at him greedily without blinking.
"Ahhhh!!"
Yuta Kobayashi let out a terrified scream, his body jolting backward as if electrocuted. He lost his balance and fell heavily onto the floor, a sharp pain shooting through his tailbone.
He crawled backward on his hands and feet until his back hit the cold edge of the low table, knocking over the cup of cold barley tea.
He was still in shock, his chest heaving violently as he gasped for breath, his eyes fixed on the gap, his pupils dilated with fear.
That brief yet incredibly clear eye contact, that cold, evil eye filled with an unsettling, voyeuristic desire, was deeply etched into his mind.
Is it a hallucination? Or a visual hallucination caused by studying too much literature for too long? Or is it a sign of a breakdown due to extreme fatigue and mental stress?
He started to get confused.
Kobayashi Yuta trembled slightly, supporting his somewhat weak body with his arms. His heart was pounding wildly in his chest, bringing waves of palpitations and nausea. He dared not approach that wall again, or even turn his back to it.
Everything in the room that was once familiar—the stacked books, the crooked ukiyo-e prints, even his usual mug—now seemed shrouded in an eerie and ominous veil, becoming strange.
He was absolutely certain, one hundred percent sure.
Just now... something was watching him through that crack!
That familiar, chilling coldness crept up his spine once again, more clearly, colder, and more malevolent than ever before.
Yuko Kobayashi looked around the small, cheap apartment she had rented to save money, and for the first time, she felt that every inch of air and every wall here was filled with a cold and suffocating sense of oppression.
The walls no longer provide shelter; instead, they become transparent cages, hiding unseen eyes filled with voyeuristic desires.
A light rain was still falling outside, and the darkness of the night swallowed up the small room 307.
The tales of voyeurism have only just begun.
The thing behind that wall, after its first silent contact with him, seemed to have only just... fully awakened.
A note from the author:
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